“You have undertaken a great enterprise.  It was, without a doubt, a miraculous piece of fortune which brought the Englishman, Dominey, to your camp just at the moment when you received your orders from headquarters.  Your self-conceived plan has met with every encouragement from us.  You will be placed in a unique position to achieve your final purpose.  Now mark my words and do not misunderstand me.  The very keynote of our progress is ruthlessness.  To take even a single step forward towards the achievement of that purpose is worth the sacrifice of all the scruples and delicacies conceivable.  But when a certain course of action is without profit to our purpose, I see ugliness in it.  It distresses me.”

“What the devil do you mean?” Dominey demanded.

“I sleep with one ear open,” Seaman replied.

“Well?”

“I saw you leave your room early this morning,” Seaman continued, “carrying Lady Dominey in your arms.”

There were little streaks of pallor underneath the tan in Dominey’s face.  His eyes were like glittering metal.  It was only when he had breathed once or twice quickly that he could command his voice.

“What concern is this of yours?” he demanded.

Seaman gripped his companion’s arm.

“Look here,” he said, “we are too closely allied for bluff.  I am here to help you fill the shoes of another man, so far as regards his estates, his position, and character, which, by the by, you are rehabilitating.  I will go further.  I will admit that it is not my concern to interfere in any ordinary amour you might undertake, but—­I shall tell you this, my friend, to your face—­that to deceive a lady of weak intellect, however beautiful, to make use of your position as her supposed husband, is not, save in the vital interests of his country, the action of a Prussian nobleman.”

Dominey’s passion seemed to have burned itself out without expression.  He showed not the slightest resentment at his companion’s words.

“Have no fear, Seaman,” he enjoined him.  “The situation is delicate, but I can deal with it as a man of honour.”

“You relieve me,” Seaman confessed.  “You must admit that the spectacle of last night was calculated to inspire me with uneasiness.”

“I respect you for your plain words,” Dominey declared.  “The fact is, that Lady Dominey was frightened of the storm last night and found her way into my room.  You may be sure that I treated her with all the respect and sympathy which our positions demanded.”

“Lady Dominey,” Seaman remarked meditatively, “seems to be curiously falsifying certain predictions.”

“In what way?”

“The common impression in the neighbourhood here is that she is a maniac chiefly upon one subject—­her detestation of you.  She has been known to take an oath that you should die if you slept in this house again.  You naturally, being a brave man, ignored all this, yet in the morning after your first night here there was blood upon your night clothes.”